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Life was
filled with seemingly impossible challenges for P.G.’s characters, who
inhabited a fictional outer periphery of the 1920s – just before the Great
Crash, presumably. Even in the best of times these young men faced penury,
unable even to buy a new pair of spats. They were constantly dodging fearful,
dominating aunts and fiancés; sighing for unattainable debutantes and ticking
off their superior valets (except
Jeeves of course, who was infuriatingly perfect). And then there were
impenetrable plots into which the author thrust them!
Wodehouse
plots have to be experienced – lived through – while facing the threat of death
from laughter. They are indescribable,
but to give newcomers a hint, here is the thread on which one tremendous drama
hangs:
Bertie is
invited down to a country house for le weekend (as the French call it,
with undisguised wonder). It may have been one of those dramas at Blandings
Castle. Anyhow, Bertie is given a room on the highest floor – between two other
bachelors whom, he is led to believe, have psychological problems. One is suicidal, the other is a paranoid
often inclined to want to murder people. Bertie’s reason for being invited to the three-day house party is that
he must keep the two of them “in order”. And there is no Jeeves in sight. Think on it! The situation makes today’s horror movies sound like
mother’s milk trickling into an infant’s happy stomach.
It is no wonder Bertie and his compatriots
were inclined to drink a glass of wine or two whenever circumstances
provided. No wonder they pelted diners
with breadrolls at Drones Club lunches.
Here are some samples of what
these gallant members of the lower peerage had to endure.
GALAHAD ON TEA
….the Hon. Galahad Threepwood produced a black-rimmed monocle, and, screwing it into his eye,
surveyed the table with a frown of distaste.
"Tea?"
Millicent
reached for a cup.
"Cream
and sugar, Uncle GaIly?"
He
stopped her with a gesture of shocked loathing. "You know I never drink
tea. Too much respect for my inside. Don't tell me you are ruining your inside
with that poison."
"Sorry,
Uncle GaIly. I like it."
"You be careful," urged the Hon. Galahad, who was fond of
his niece and did not like to see her falling into bad habits.
"You
be very careful how you fool about with that stuff. Did I ever tell you about
poor Buffy Struggles back in 'ninetythree? Some misguided person lured poor
old Buffy into one of those temperance lectures illustrated with coloured
slides, and he called on me next day ashen, poor old chap - ashen. 'Gally,' he
said. 'What would you say the procedure was when a fellow wants to buy tea? How
would a fellow set about it?'
'Tea?' I said. 'What do you want tea for?"
"To drink", said Buffy.'
Pull
yourself together, dear boy,' I said. 'You're talking wildly. You can't drink
tea. Have a brandy and soda.'
'No more alcohol for me,' said Buffy. 'Look
what it does to the common earthworm.'
'But you're not a common earthworm,' I said,
putting my finger on the flaw in his argument right away. 'I dashed soon shall
be if I go on drinking alcohol,' said Buffy. Well, I begged him with tears in my eyes not to do anything rash, but I
couldn't move him. He ordered in ten pounds of the muck and was dead inside the
year."
"Good
heavens! Really?"
The
Hon. Galahad nodded impressively.
"Dead as a door-nail. Got run over by a
hansom cab, poor dear old chap, as he was crossing Piccadilly."
Extract
from" Summer Lightning."
Members of the Drones club were affable, but not
really big on brains.
If you think Gussie was a goof – not to mention Bertie
Wooster– then look at another character from another set of PG’s books –
THE PINHEADEDNESS
OF ARCHIBALD
People who enjoyed a merely superficial acquaintance with my nephew
Archibald (said Mr. Mulliner) were accustomed to set him down as just an
ordinary pinheaded young man. It was only when they came to know him better
that they discovered their mistake. Then they realised that his pinheadedness,
so far from being ordinary, was exceptional. Even at the Drones Club, where the
average of intellect is not high, it was often said of Archibald that, had his
brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find
sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers. He sauntered
through life with a cheerful insouciance, and up to the age of twenty-five had
only once been moved by anything in the nature of a really strong emotion -- on
the occasion when, in the heart of Bond Street and at the height of the London
season, he discovered that his man, Meadowes, had carelessly sent him out with
odd spats on.
In the Drones Club, to which a large number of P.G.’s younger male characters belong,
inebriation is a matter of daily retrospection, ranking in importance only
below the nightmare of possibly being forced to make a speech – or listen to
one.
Here are excerpts on the subject of oratory:
HORROR AND PERIL
Presently there was some applause
- sporadic, Jeeves has since told me it was - and I saw Gussie being steered by
a bearded bloke in a gown to a seat in the middle of the platform.
And I confess that as I beheld him
and felt that there but for the grace of God went Bertram Wooster, a shudder
ran through the frame. It all reminded me so vividly of the time I had
addressed that girls' school.
Of course, looking at it dispassionately, you may say that for horror
and peril there is no comparison between an almost human audience like the one
before me and a mob of small girls with pigtails down their backs, and this, I
concede, is true. Nevertheless, the spectacle was enough to make me feel like a
fellow watching a pal going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and the thought of
what I had escaped caused everything for a moment to go black and swim before
my eyes.
(From ‘Right-Ho Jeeves)
Their minds boggled at the thought of golfers wanting to make a
speech. .
"The way it looks to me is that I'm just starting,” said George.
“This eloquence is a thing that rather grows on one. You didn't hear about my
after-dinner speech at the anniversary banquet of the firm, I suppose! My dear
fellow, a riot! A positive stampede. Had 'em laughing and then crying and then laughing again and then crying
once more till six of ‘em had to be led out and the rest down with hic-coughs.
Napkins waving. . . three tables broken. . . waiters in hysterics. I tell you,
I played on them as on a stringed instrument. . . . "
"Can
you play on a stringed instrument!"
"As it
happens, no. But as I would have played on a stringed instrument if I could
play on a stringed instrument. Wonderful sense of power it gives you. I mean to
go in pretty largely for that sort of thing in future."
"You must not let it interfere with your golf"
He gave a laugh which turned my blood cold.
"Golf!"
he said. "After all, what is golf! Just pushing a small ball into a hole.
A child could do it. Indeed, children have done it with great success. I see an
infant of fourteen has just won some sort of championship. Could that stripling
convulse a roomful of banqueters! I think not! To sway your fellow-men with a
word, to hold them with a gesture. . . that is the real salt of life. I don't
suppose I shall play much more golf now. I'm making arrangements for a
lecturing-tour, and I'm booked up for fifteen lunches already."
Those were his words. A man who had once done the lakehole in one. A
man whom the committee were grooming for the amateur championship. I am no
weakling but I confess they sent a chill shiver down my spine.
[Excerpt from ‘The Salvation of George Mackintosh’ in The Clicking of Cuthbert]
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